what age should someone start to learn guitar?

When I was working as a full time guitar teacher I would often get calls from parents who wanted their children to begin guitar lessons. A considerable percentage of these children however were just too young, under the age of 8.

Through prior experience when I first started teaching guitar I made the mistake of accepting one or two students around 6 years of age and I learned very quickly that it’s just not worth the time and effort it takes to teach guitar to children that age. Their concentration spans are short and they just haven’t developed the level of coordination necessary to learn guitar effectively.

The problem is that unlike other musical instruments such as piano for example, learning guitar requires you to be very precise. You have to match the right string with the left hand and pick it with the right hand, you have to hold down the strings in a particular way to get them to sound, you have to be very careful not to mute strings in chords plus other things like the fact that it’s going to hurt your fingers.

So what’s the ideal age to begin learning guitar? 10 years of age

After my initial experiences I would always advise parents with children that age to start on piano instead. It’s just so much easier for that age group to be able to produce a nursery rhyme melody for example, you push the key and the note sounds. That’s a much simpler process than guitar and in a few years when they are more developed they can make the switch to guitar.

Now having said all that, it is possible for very young children to show promise on guitar and actually have enough raw talent to start the instrument at a young age but they are quite certainly exceptions to the rule.

Continue onto What A Real Guitar Teacher Can Do For You